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Tuesday, February 4, 2014

Weird Adventures: The Board Room

We're getting ready to run Trey Causey's Weird Adventures setting using Fate at Con of the North in a couple of weeks. Today's post is about getting into the mood of the City.Places of light, places of shadow: it's in a dozen of the City's well-appointed board rooms that decisions are made affecting millions. The Bottom Line is attended to here, affecting hiring and firing at hundreds of firms, the trimming or expansion of industries, decisions to deepen or pull investments in Fate Exchange, allocations for charities to pacify and in some cases improve the conditions of the working masses of the Baronies, and much, much more.

Entire branches of wizardry are dedicated to influencing, amplifying, or mitigating what happens in these well-guarded rooms. Special care is taken with how board rooms are arranged, equipped, and decorated. Firms select only the most propitious table woods to fashion their board room's Great Table. At least one Captain of Industry in the City meets with his board of directors around a table fashioned from snapwood prised from Yggdrasil itself in far away Ealderde. It's said he paid a dear price for that table.

All of the major firms also keep defensive practitioners on retainer to ensure their board rooms are well-warded. The sanctum sanctorum of a magical corporate security specialist is never more than a room or two away from the board room. Its occupant will always be monitoring the board room and its immediate surrounds when an important meeting is underway. Such specialists often keep their own, esoteric ciphered Minutes of board meetings.

Such Books of Minutes fetch high prices for those who are able to filch them. These ledger books record much, much more than what people are saying. They often reveal the subtle influences on board members, the occulted Conflicts of Interest that each brings to the table.

Thanks, Olman! That's a pretty apt analogy. I have a feeling it's very similar to IT: no one says "thank you" or "we have great support" when the system is working, but there's Hell to pay when things are down.

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"In your day you have learnt to calculate something of the magnitudes of space and time. But to grasp my theme in its true proportions, it is necessary to do more than calculate. It is necessary to brood upon these magnitudes, to draw out the mind toward them, to feel the littleness of your here and now, and of the moment of civilization you call history." - Olaf Stapledon